Class mentoring is our most popular volunteer opportunity. It is also our number one biggest volunteer need! Mentors hold “office hours” once or twice a week with small groups of students in our online classes.

Mentors have the opportunity to build relationships with students, guiding them through difficult concepts and helping them gain confidence in their programming skills. During each office hours session, mentors review the week’s concepts, help students by answering questions and resolving blockers, or demonstrate how to approach the assignment through pair programming. 

Most class mentors volunteer 1-3 hours per week over the course of the 16-week class. Mentors choose the times they want to offer office hours and are not responsible for tracking student progress or creating class content. 

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The By-Appointment-Only Mentor & Reviewer (BAO) role is great for people who want to asynchronously volunteer with our classes. There are two parts to this role: BAO Mentors are available for scheduled 1:1 meetings with students to answer specific questions or resolve blockers. These volunteers are also assigned a group of 2-4 students and review their weekly coding assignments submitted through GitHub or Repl.it, making suggestions for how the code can be improved. 

Most BAO Mentors and Assignment Reviewers volunteer 2-4 hours per week, but this is highly flexible; they can meet with as many students as they choose, and can review assignments at any time of day. 

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Students complete an 8-week practicum at the end of each Ruby on Rails, React.js, and Node.js/Express class. The Practicum is an opportunity for students to learn and experience working on a team while building a final project. Students work in teams of 3-4 and are responsible for project management. 

Practicum Project Leads shepherd the student team through their app development. They help resolve blockers and merge conflicts, coordinate weekly meetings with the student team, and model professional communication throughout the project. 

Most Practicum Project Leads volunteer 2-4 hours per week over the course of the 8-week practicum.

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This is a big volunteer need! Project Coaches work on existing Code the Dream client app development projects that are managed by our senior staff. Coaches familiarize themselves with the project code base, and then help our junior apprentices by answering questions and helping to resolve blockers. Project Coaches review pull requests to keep the project moving along. 

This is a great opportunity for experienced developers to get involved in the meat of what Code the Dream is doing and work alongside our apprentices. We ask for at least a three month commitment and at least five hours per week. Our tech stack is Ruby on Rails and React.js, and we have a couple of projects with a Node.js backend.

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We are always seeking tech professionals who can provide 1-hour workshops during our weekly “Skill-IT” series. These workshop leaders present content on issues in their area of expertise that are beneficial to our software developer apprentices. Often, Skill-ITs include a hands-on component in which our apprentices can practice what they are learning. 

Skill-IT is an hour-long event on Fridays at 12 pm ET via Zoom. Skill-ITs can be one-time workshops or a series that spans several weeks.  So instead of one session, a Skill-IT series could take a month-long deep dive into a topic. 

Some past Skill-Its have covered:

• Technical skills (SQL, jQuery, Data structures, Testing, Containers, Accessibility)
• Career readiness (Resume writing, Improving your LinkedIn profile, Interview practice, etc.)
• Learning about tech fundamentals (History of coding, Computer science fundamentals, Web security, etc.)
• Tech career exposure (“How I became a Developer”, motivational guest speakers from a variety of tech careers, especially individuals from a minority background; people in tech jobs in non-tech companies)
• Team Building activities

You are welcome to suggest a topic to CTD, but we also have a list of high-priority topics that we would like to see in the future. You can view that list here.

Sign up as a Volunteer